DOGE WANTS TO AUDIT FORT KNOX GOLD
You might have noticed that this past week I've been blogging chiefly about computers, money, and so on, and today is no different. So many of you sent me versions of this story that I have to blog about it, with my thanks to all of you who sent this. Elon Musk and DOGE have been prompted by Senator Rand Paul to audit the gold in Fort Knox:
Musk signals DOGE could look into gold at Fort Knox
There are a number of things that give me pause about this article. Firstly, as the article itself mentions, the last time an audit was done was in 1974. I happen to know a bit about that audit because many years ago I looked into it, and needless to say, there were all sorts of problems with it. Firstly, the audit can hardly be qualified as an audit, because the latter would require access to all the vaults, and a random assay of various gold bars from various vaults, the vaults and bars to be chosen by the auditors. This was not done in the 1974 audit, according to my research of some years ago. In that research I discovered asserted that only one of the vaults in Fort Knox was opened to the auditors, in spite of their requesting to see other vaults opened. But far worse, there were only permitted to do an on-the-spot assessment of the bars, and not a genuine assay. All that could reasonably be concluded from that "audit" was that there was indeed something resembling gold in one of the vaults, though the assay quality and purity could not be determined.
This brings up my question: how is DOGE, which seems to specialize in computer tracking of money and fraud, going to conduct an audit of Fort Knox? Are professional assayers going to be hired, or is this "audit" really an examination of the accounting of individual numbered gold bars, and so on. Again: an audit implies access to random vaults and bars, to be determined by the auditors and not the
custodians, and in the case of bars, this audit must consist of an assay of the bars chosen themselves. The consistent reluctance of the authorities to allow such a real audit does indeed raise questions and legitimate concerns. On of of those concerns, I have others that I mentioned in last Wednesday's blog: I want to know not only the glittering generalities of how DOGE is conducting its examination of money flows in government accounts, I want to know the particulars: who is doing what? How are they selecting various targets, what programs and so on are being used, what uses of artificial intelligence are being employed, are these connected with Musk's super-computer center, and so on and so on. In other words, I don't just want to hear about the results - which I still want to hear about - but I also want to know how the specific results were found and achieved.This brings me to my high octane speculation of the day:
Over the past few years, as regular readers of this site are aware, I've been tracking the movement to state bullion depositories and state resolutions about constitutional money being gold and silver. Texas kicked this movement off with its state bullion depository a few years ago. It was then followed by Utah. Other states passed laws and resolutions recognizing gold and silver as money, and removing the sales tax on them, and so on. Initially I thought two basic things about these initiatives: (1) that they were good things, and (2) that they may be steps being undertaken because the perception was spreading that the federal government was failing, and irreformable. In other words, the measures were being undertaken as backup measures against the failure. Additionally, I speculated at a later point that these states would have to start allowing certificates of deposit against their bullion in their depositories to circulate as money, and that they would, in turn, have to organize regional compacts between states to recognize each others certificates of deposit as a legal tender in other states.
Then came the fly in the ointment: states started to legislate electronic means of transfers, in other words, electronic certificates of deposit, without a commensurate recognition of the physical media - coins and certificates - themselves. And now we arrive at the presence of DOGE and Fort Knox into this whole mix, for I have to wonder if the calls to audit Fort Knox's gold holdings are being urged in quiet connection to these moves by the states. After all, all bullion bars are individually numbered, but no where do I find that anyone has anything like a database of the numbered bars, their assayed weight, and purity. One cannot have any sort of bullion-based system without these things. And thus: Enter DOGE. This speculation, I strongly suspect, is related to the wider story of the state bullion depositories, for recall also that Texas in 2015 began the process of repatriating its gold "from a bank in Manhattan" (q.v.
For all this to work, there has to be transparency, and - the crucial point - one must have convertability, and be able to use real physical cash in transaction anywhere. And that convertability issue is, I suspect, the next thing that will drop, for that in turn might signal a desire for a deliberately deflationary policy on the part of the financial elites... after all, we've been there before. (Q.v. my Rialto in Richmond and its upcoming sequel, The Rialto in Richmond Reconstructedi).
See you on the flip side...
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